Victor Camlek's Blog

Following up on Healthspot

There are a couple of items worth mentioning since last week's surprise announcement from Healthspot.

Today MedCity News published a report stating that despite the demise of Healthspot, Xerox, one of the principal investors and developer of the technology powering the kiosks, remains bullish on the concept and wants to leverage the concept elsewhere.

Also of interest, healthcare video conferencing technology platform provider, VSee has a report on its blog providing an assessment of Healthspot's failure.

VSee's assessment is that the Healthspot work model was wrong because it was not an on-demand service capable of attracting a higher volume of patients. VSee based this notion off of feedback it received from the CEO of American Well, which states its Kiosk model is doing well.

Another interesting reason was that, although self-serving for VSee, Healthspot's business model was too costly. VSee attributed part of this to the fact that Healthspot selected VSee's major competitor Vidyo as its platform.

In addition, this view states the kiosks were over-designed and essentially too extravagant for the number of patients per day, which according to VSee, Healthspot reported at 10 patients per day.

The third reason given by VSee is that Healthspot targeted the wrong market. This opinion asserts that Healthspot was competing with the Urgent Care provider market. This was an alleged failure because although it may have been over-designed in comparison with other kiosk models the Healthspot kiosk could not offer the range of services an urgent care center can. Essentially, this view is a lack of cash flow, expensive technology platform and targeting the wrong market are the reasons.

It remains to be seen if this is correct because Healthspot itself remains silent. However, from the telemedicine perspective, it is good news that competitors and technical leaders continue to see opportunities for virtual kiosks to succeed